Lockdown Diaries

The story of how five resourceful rural entrepreneurs re-engineered their businesses to thrive under the lockdown.

The lockdowns of 2020 had the potential to devastate the rural economy. With pubs and restaurants ordered to close, no visitors and huge uncertainty over what the future held. Memories of the last disease outbreak, when Foot & Mouth effectively shuttered large swaths of the countryside economy, remain fresh in the Forest of Bowland, but the arrival of Covid brought a different set of challenges – and as it turned out – a new set of opportunities. Back in 2001, the internet was still in its infancy and rural broadband almost nonexistent, but, this time, as mutual support groups sprung up across the Forest of Bowland, local businesses began to leverage the marvels of modern communication to reach out to their customers. These ad hoc self-help groups quickly brought communities closer, revealed new ways of doing business and established alternative local supply chains from the bottom up. A lot of the activity was initially a bit make-do-and-mend, but the enterprising business folk of Bowland soon figured out what worked and how to deliver it.